Oct 7, 2010 @ 9:00:00 am

October 07, 2010

Mario Vargas Llosa

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosahas won the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first South American writer to win the 1.5 million dollar prize since Gabriel Garcia Marquez won it in 1982. Perhaps the shared glory will end the longstanding feud between the two authors, which climaxed the day Vargas Llosa decked Garcia Marquez in a movie theater, leaving him with a black eye.

Tonight, NYU is hosting a memorial celebration for David Markson, the experimental novelist (and David Foster Wallace fave) who passed away this summer. Writers Ann Beattie, Art Spiegelman, Pete Hamill, and Chris Sorrentino (among others), as well as Markson's daughter, Johanna, will read from his work and tell stories of his life, and Kate Valk, a member of the art-theater troupe The Wooster Group, will read from Markson's 1988 novel Wittgenstein's Mistress.